Welcome along. Is your advertising working as hard as you are? Genuinely? Is it? Is it stimulating awareness? Provoking trial by purchase? Inciting repeat purchases by more and more customers? If it is, break out the champagne and celebrate. That’s fabulous. If it’s not doing any of those things-then STOP. Right now. STOP your campaign dead in its tracks. The whole intent of your advertising is to generate sales. Sometimes that’s an immediate lift in response as measured at the cash register.

Sometimes it’s a measurable call to action to visit a website and get a coupon, a free report, or to place a phone call for more information.
Sadly most advertising fails to leave a mark. Worse, it fails to make a sale. Even enough sales to justify the cost of the ad process from concept to placement. So if you can look at your ads right now, and they’re not working- then stop them, NOW!!

Some years back I had a very prominent specialized financial lender as a client who used business newspapers, and a few magazines very smartly.
His audience was well targeted. His ads were well written. An engaging testimonial style with an inviting headline for each of them. Beneath their logo they placed a 1-800 Number for anyone to call in. They did this for two years and enjoyed great response by all accounts.

One fateful year, they asked about the relevance of the 1-800 Number. I suggested customizing it a bit more by adding a specific ‘Extension’ number in the ad. Or to ask for a certain person whose name appeared in the ad. This way it could be accurately measured and tracked which ads were working and which inquiries were coming from which papers in each market. This was dismissed as being unnecessary as they ‘had a pretty good idea’ where the replies were coming from even though they couldn’t measure it.

I don’t know about you dear reader, but when I’m spending $100,000 on a campaign, I WANT TO KNOW where my replies are coming from, not just a pretty good idea!

Which ads are working?.
How are they working?.
Are we getting a better response from ad A or B or C ?.
This is the underpinning to all future successes.
TEST your ads. Track what’s working or not.

It strikes me that too many advertisers are worried about the cosmetics of the ad and less about the return it can deliver. The role of your advertising is to make sales.

You don’t have to take my word for it.

There is a century old benchmark of what advertising is, but that’s for another day.

For today, concentrate on stopping your advertising that’s ineffective, dull, boring, and not driving any business. That first step to stop will be a pivotal moment for you and your future success. You’ve worked hard to get this far. Don’t let your advertising let you down.

Stay tuned.

P.S. Recently someone posed the question of why I advocate TESTING. Heck let’s just put all our media muscle behind the campaign and run with it. Hmmm? Trouble is, without knowing if it’s working, you can run the campaign off an expensive cliff and suffer a very pricey fail.  

Here’s a favourite analogy for you: You don’t need to eat a whole bowl of soup to discover if it’s too salty. One or two spoonfuls should tell you. Treat your campaign the same way.